1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to grinders and more particularly, to such a grinder, which allows easy adjustment of the ground powder particle size.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is quite common to use powdered or grained spice such as pepper powder, curry powder, coffee beans, and etc. (herein generally referred to as spice) in the preparation of food or drinks. Powdered spice can easily solved in liquid or evenly distributed on the food.
There have been available spice grinders, which are of two types. That is, grains or pieces of spice are put into a grinder, which is manually or electrically operated to grind the grains or pieces into powder for direct sprinkling onto food or soup. These grinders are quite popular among users for the advantage of instant grinding. Taiwan Patent Nos. 367805 and 415215 (equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,384), issued to the present inventor, discloses a similar design. According to this design, the grinder comprises a housing, a spindle, a grinding device, a particle size adjusting device, and a driving device. This design is functional, however it still has drawbacks. Before putting the material to be ground into the housing, the user must remove the driving device from the housing. This operation manner is inconvenient. Therefore, an improvement is necessary.
Further, a conventional grinder has a ground power particle size adjusting device at the top or bottom side for allowing adjustment of the desired ground powder particle size. Because the ground power particle size adjusting device is spaced from the grinding device at a distance, it is not effective to adjust the desired ground powder particle size. In the aforesaid U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,384, the ground powder particle size adjusting device is provided at the bottom center of the housing, comprising an annular base disk with a pair of wings, each wing extending from an opposite side of the base disk, the wings extending to a disk post at a center of the base disk, the disk post having a disk hole and two wing slots, a disk packing having two side wings being disposed in the disk hole, with the two side wings located in the wing slots, a screw rod of a knob being passed through the disk hole of the disk post to lock with a packing piece. When the knob is turned, the disk packing may displace upwardly and downwardly and further cause the spindle connected with the disk packing to also displace upwardly and downwardly for adjusting the clearance between the disk teeth and the grinding teeth. According to this bottom adjustment design, the annular base disk and the knob may easily be covered with the ground powder. Further, when a rotary cover is coupled to the bottom side of the housing, cleaning of the annular base disk and the knob becomes complicated.